sombear said:
whiterock said:
Redbrickbear said:
whiterock said:
thales said:
whiterock said:
Redbrickbear said:
whiterock said:
Redbrickbear said:
sombear said:
Redbrickbear said:
Glad this guy is breaking news that was well known over 20 years ago!
The fight was very much public: Russia and its allies on one wide, the Wes on the other.
.
Most Western countries in Europe never wanted this fight.
Most American either for that matter
Nor was the U.S. government open with our people that USAID and other groups were flooding Ukraine with tax payer money to support coups and regime change operations
sadly, Russia did want this fight, so it landed in our lap anyway.
lol Nothing landed in our lap
The powers that be in DC spent billions of tax payer dollars and 20+ years getting us into this mess
uh, no. the taxpayers did not spend billions to foment instability in Ukraine. Russia did that. We did the exact opposite.
There are things to criticize about our Ukraine policy over the last 20 years. But it is silly on every level to suggest that our actions forced Russia into a just war.
we have played the aggressor for the majority of the past 90 years so who are we to talk?
that and nato has slowly expanded since is creation and the ussr and then russia has been specifically excluded from it
they feel like they are being encroached upon - and they are
it is no different than communism spreading to cuba and our government throwing a fit when it did
lol Russia is being encroached upon only on the sense the number of countries they can invade goes down when NATO expands.
Zero chance Nato ever invades Russia, and Russia full well knows that
Had the USA lost the Cold War in 1991 and broken up leaving a rump American Federation that was 33% smaller in territory and with half the population….not to mention having to watch NATO collapse and the Warsaw pact expand to include all of Western Europe (our old sphere of influence )
DC leaders would probably be pretty upset
And they would get downright vicious if Russia then tied to expand its military alliance into Canada or Mexico and put military bases right on our borders
Again, we see the war policy opponents making stuff up to fit their template.
1) The USSR expanded alliances with states in Central America and we didn't invade them.
2) No one. Not one leader, advocated putting military bases in Ukraine.
3) For that matter, Nato had not put a single permanent base in any of the former Warsaw Pact states, specifically to avoid alarming Russia, to signal that admittance of those states was a "Russia shall not invade here" sign, not a springboard for and invasion of Russia. (And Russia knows that.)
4) on the day the war started in 2014, Ukraine was a Nato partner, JUST LIKE SWEDEN AND FINLAND.
5) Ukraine did not actually apply for membership until after Russia outright invaded in 2022.
The whole "Nato started it" is preposterously disingenuous bs, even more easily disprovable than the "Maidan was a USG sponsored coup" nonsense. Refusing to promise not to do something is not grounds for war. Prudent powers should never say what they will or will not do just to keep others happy. It's called "strategic ambiguity." Keep your opponent guessing. Make them prepare for every scenario, which forces them to disperse resources away from the more likely ones.
The premise of your argument is that we must coddle every Russian concern. How about we start demanding Russia coddle some of ours, like promising not to invade ANYT of their neighbors? Will you advocate going to war with them if they refuse to do so?
Just to expand on #4 and further demonstrate how ridiculous the NATO argument it, nobody in Ukraine even wanted NATO in 2014. Politicians were uniform in openly running against it. Russia turned Ukraine to NATO by invading it. It's just that simple.
Not sure why you keep repeating that "no one in Ukraine wanted to join NATO in 2014" or before
Pretty easy to prove that almost half the country did want that.
It was a long time debate in the country....a fault line between the pro-western and pro-eastern parties
Yushchenko was saying in 2009 that Ukraine should join NATO
[
Yuschenko stressed that the talks held in the frames of his two-day
official visit to Belgium have shown that
Ukraine has all the groundsto be optimistic about its chances for joining the European Union
andNATO.]
https://www.kyivpost.com/post/10159[President Viktor Yushchenko hoped to change that. He had been swept to power during the 2004-2005 Orange Revolution, protests that were prompted by reports of electoral fraud. Yushchenko promised the protesters a future that did away with Ukraine's corrupt, Kremlin-dominated past. Much like Georgia, another former Soviet state seeking to shake off Russian influence,
Ukraine saw NATO membership as one route to independence and sought membership in 2008.]
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2014/09/04/that-time-ukraine-tried-to-join-nato-and-nato-said-no/Plus here is a BBC article from June of 2010
[Since his February inauguration, Mr Yanukovych has wasted no time in re-shaping Ukraine's foreign policy in a more Moscow-friendly way, the BBC's David Stern in Kiev says.
In April, he agreed to extend the lease allowing Russia's Black Sea fleet to be stationed in the southern port of Sevastopol by 25 years in return for cheaper gas.
An extension of the lease, due to expire in 2017, had been opposed by Mr Yushchenko.
Moscow had made known its opposition to Ukraine's plans to join Nato,]
https://www.bbc.com/news/10229626
